The Initiative, Referendum and Recall in Switzerland

• Author: William E. Rappard
• Published date: 01 September 1912
• Date: 01 September 1912
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/000271621204300108
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE INITIATIVE, REFERENDUM AND RECALL
IN SWITZERLAND
BY WILLIAM E. RAPPARD,
Of Geneva, Switzerland,
Instructor in Economics at Harvard University.
I.
WHY SWISS DEMOCRACY SHOULD INTEREST AMERICANS
There are two compelling reasons which make the Swiss experi-
ment in direct democracy well worth considering in the United States.
1.
The United States and Switzerland: A Parallel
In the first place, political analogies although often deceptive, are
always interesting and may sometimes be helpful. The closer they
are, the less deceptive and the more suggestive they must prove to be.
Now the contrasts are no doubt many and striking between the
young, colossal, and ever-expanding republic, founded on the shores
of a new continent at the close of the eighteenth century, and the
ancient and minute Helvetic commonwealth, situated in the heart
of Western Europe, whose legendary origins lie hidden in the dark-
ness of the Middle Ages. But between the two countries of to-day,
there are relations and resemblances also, which, though they may
escape the glance of the superficial observer, should not be over-
looked by the careful student of comparative politics.
Both are federal republics in which the so-called principle of
&dquo;double sovereignty,&dquo; local and national, has given rise to the same
legal problems and to the same political difficulties.
The Swiss
constitution of 1848, of which the present fundamental law of 1874
is the natural outgrowth, was a conscious imitation of the American
constitution of 1789.1
Both countries are democracies.
This is
1
This is denied by Ruttimann in his work entitled Das nordamerikanische Bundesstaatsrecht
verglichen mit den politischen Einrichlungen der Schweiz, 3 vols., Zurich, 1867-1876, vol. I, p. 25.
But the constitutional debates, as well as the whole Swiss political literature of the first half of
the nineteenth century, conclusively show that he is mistaken. See for instance the characteristic
quotations in Th. Curti’s Die schweizerischen Volksrechle 1848 bis 1900, Bern 1900, pp. 1-12;
Hilty, "Das Referendum im schweizerischen Staatsrecht," Archiv für öffentliches Recht, 1887,
p. 207; W. D. McCrackan, "The Swiss and American Constitutions," Arena, vol. IV, July, 1891,
p. 173; A. V. Dicey, "The United States and the Swiss Confederation," The Nation, October,
1885, vol. XLI, p. 297. Cf. also the introduction to my article on the "Initiative and the Refer-
endum in Switzerland," in the August, 1912, number of the American Folitical Science Review.
(110)

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111
indisputably true of Switzerland. It is still sometimes questioned
of the United States.
Without entering upon a discussion on this
point, we would ask those who are inclined to deny it, what term
could more adequately define the political r£gime of a nation, whose
citizens are so unanimously convinced that they are living under a
government of the people, for the people, and by the people? That
formula of democracy so perfectly expresses the prevailing senti-
ment, that all positive institutions which conflict with it, have be-
come anachronistic and are therefore doomed.
In the actual
workings of party government there are certainly many contrasts
between the two republics, but that the-political machine is not an
American monopoly, will be clearly recognized the day some acute
observer renders Switzerland the great public service for which the
United States is so grateful to Mr. James Bryce.
Economically, it is true, there are no apparent resemblances
between ocean-bounded, wheat-growing, and mining America, and
pastoral Switzerland, with its poverty in mineral wealth and its
lack of seaports. But when Mr. Bradford, discussing the possible
application of Swiss methods of popular government to America,
warns his readers against fallacious analogies on the ground that
Switzerland &dquo;has no very large manufactures or large cities and no
great extremes of wealth and poverty, &dquo; he is certainly mistaken.2
The cotton-spinning and weaving trades, the silk, embroidery,
watchmaking and chemical industries of Zurich, Basle, St. Gall,
Neuchatel and Geneva are, in proportion to the size of the commu-
nities in which they prosper, quite comparable to the largest manu-
factures in the United States. They are organized on a highly capi-
talistic basis and have therefore given rise to an industrial proletariat
on the one hand and to great fortunes on the other. On the whole,
no doubt, wealth is more evenly distributed in Switzerland than in
Great Britain or Germany, but cannot the same be claimed for the
United States?
New York, it is true, is more than twenty-five
times as large as Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland, but there is
relatively a more numerous urban population in Switzerland than
in the United States. The number of cities whose population exceeds
65,000 is sixty-five in the United States, and five in Switzerland, a
proportion of 13 to 1. But the total population of the United States
is to that of Switzerland about as 25 is to 1. It is important to notice
3
G. Bradford, The Lesson of Popular Government, 2 vols., New York, 1899, vol. II, p. 231.

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112
that the distribution of population according to occupations is not
essentially different in the two countries. In 1905, of the 1,818,217
Swiss, who could be classed as immediate producers, 43 per cent
were engaged in agriculture, 40 per cent in manufacturing and
mechanical pursuits, and 17 per cent in trade and transportation.
The corresponding figures for the United States, according to the
census of 1900, were 41 per cent, 39 per cent, and 20 per cent.3
Socially again the parallelism is striking.
In both countries
the middle-class agricultural element, though numerically weaker
than all the other classes combined, is still represented by a strong
and prosperous body of land-owning farmers, whose influence is
always potent and often decisive in national affairs. In both coun-
tries Protestantism is the prevailing creed, but in both there is an
important Catholic minority. In point of general education and
public enlightenment Switzerland occupies in continental Europe a
situation similar to that of the United States in America.4 Thanks
to the constantly growing influx of foreigners of German, French,
3
Absolute accuracy cannot, of course, be claimed for these figures. They are based on official
Swiss and American data, combined in such a way as to make a comparison possible. Miners and
quarrymen, for instance, who, in Swiss statistics, are classified with the farmers, as being like-
wise engaged in Gewinnung der Naturerzeugnisse, have been transferred to the second category.
On the other hand, hotel-keepers and the like, who, according to the American census, are engaged
in domestic and personal service, have been counted with tradespeople.
Cf. Statistisches Jahr-
buch der Schweiz, Jahrgang, 1907. Ergebnisse der eidg. Betriebszählung von 1905, and Statistical
Abstract of the United States for 1911.
4
Obviously this statement cannot be scientifically substantiated. Perhaps the most signifi-
cant tangible symptom of wealth and education, the two essential conditions of advanced civili-
zation, is the comparative amount of written matter annually forwarded by mail. The following
table may therefore be pertinently cited in this connection:
—See United States Statistical Abstract, 1910.
Although such general
show that, with regard to data must
the
be
amount
interpreted
of money
with
spent
extreme
per scholar caution, statistics seem
for educational purposes, to
no
government in Europe more nearly approaches the United States than Switzerland. See A. D.
Wells, The New Dictionary of Statistics, London, 1911, p. 209.

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113
and Italian origin, Switzerland is confronted with an immigration
problem which, in many of its aspects, is even more perplexing than
that which at present faces American statesmen. Switzerland,
it is true, has never been seriously troubled with a race question,
but that in the Helvetic, as well as in the American republic, national
unity has no ethnological basis is clearly shown by the varieties of
languages spoken by the Swiss people.’ It would be a most interest-
ing task to show that Switzerland owes no less to the religious intol-
erance of other nations than does the United States, but this would
lead us too far away from our main subject. We may say, however,
in concluding this comparative political, economic and social sketch,
that the historical influence of the Huguenot element in Switzerland,
can well be compared to that exerted by the Puritans and the other
religious refugees on American prosperity and on American institu-
tions.
&dquo;But,&dquo; I hear an impatient reader exclaim in patriotic protest,
&dquo; why all these laboriously established analogies? What can the
hundred millions of United States citizens learn from the example
of a nation smaller, in population, than New York City?&dquo;
My
answer is simple.
The modem devices of direct democracy which
we are about to discuss, obtain in the federal government in Swit-
zerland, whereas, to begin with at least, it is not proposed to apply
them to the federal government in America. Now, small as she may
appear, Switzerland is larger than all American cities but one, and
larger also than many American States.6
6
On December 1, 1910, Switzerland had a population of 3,741,971. Its distribution accord-
ing to creed, tongue and nationality is shown in the following table:
—Statistisches Jahrbuch der Schweiz, Jahrgang, 1910.
6
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